Mayor Giuliani's Sensation
Last week the New York art world was stunned when Mayor Rudy Giuliani began a drive to clean up the Brooklyn Museum of Art using the same techniques he employed against Mob control of the Fulton Fish Market at the beginning of his term.
If he sticks with it to the bitter end, he might just succeeded in changing American (and perhaps world) art and culture for the better.
Objecting to city funding for �Sensation,� a show which includes a picture of the Virgin Mary covered with elephant dung, sliced-up animals, and work glorifying Myra Hindley, a British child murderer, the Mayor has stopped a $7 million operating payment to the museum and threatened a future $20 million for construction.
Giuliani immediately went public with his objections, denounced the leadership of the museum for bad judgement at a press conference, and threatened to evict the institution from city property. He cited as legal grounds for his decision a requirement that municipal museum exhibits are suitable for visits by schoolchildren, and his authority as landlord over tenants in a city-funded building.
Mayor Giuliani treated the Brooklyn museum in the same way he would treat a crack-house in a city-owned apartment complex. That is what makes his move such a sensation. By acting publicly, decisively, and straightforwardly, the Mayor has changed the rules of the game.
"You don't have a right to government subsidy for desecrating somebody else's religion," Giuliani declared. "And therefore we will do everything that we can to remove funding for the Brooklyn Museum until the director comes tohis senses and realizes that if you are a government-subsidized enterprise, then you can't do things that desecrate the most personal and deeply held views of people in society. I mean, this is an outrageous thing to do."
In other words, the Mayor has structured this conflict so that he is on the side of the people against those who oppress them. In this case the oppressors are the Brooklyn Museum of Art and its supporters in the art world.
Giuliani knows what he is doing. He is not, contrary to his critics, a neanderthal. In fact, the Mayor is an opera lover who has appeared onstage at the Met (remember seeing him on PBS?). He is also an amateur photographer who has exhibited in galleries .
And the �Sensation� exhibit is not an action by a lone artist protesting against the injustices of the bourgeoise. Rather, it is an official statement by a government entity (and the Brooklyn Museum still receives funding from the Federal government as well as the City of New York) that it wishes to offend the public that supports it.
In other words, it is �official art,� deliberate, premeditated, and approved by committees. The �Sensation� exhibit serves as an act of domination by the museum�s board of directors and confederates designed to subjugate critics of current trends in contemporary art--literally rubbing their noses in it.
The �Sensation� show is not an accident, or a mistake. It is not on the fringes of the art world. It is a deliberate provocation in the artistic capital of the United States, engineered by an academic with an Ivy-League doctorate in art history. The taste in �Sensation� is the taste of the Establishment. (One might note in this regard that Eve Ensler, author of �The Vagina Monologues� has been invited onto a key committee for First Lady Hilary Clinton�s Senate bid in New York, according to the New York Times).
One might even call this part of the Establishment the �Art Mob.�
In a way, the Art Mob is using the �Sensation� exhibit like the other Mob uses a dead fish delivered to the victim of a contract--to humiliate and terrorize the opposition. Don�t even think about crossing us, is the message of the show.
Until now, critics of the dominant hegemony have been othered, marginalized and silenced,demoralized by the apparent hopelessness of attempting to change the cultural climate. How can anyone fight the Art Mafia? Most voted with their feet and simply moved to fields not dominated by the Mob, much as businesses and residents fled Mafia dominated New York prior to Giuliani.
Then, in one move, Mayor Giuliani has acted dramatically--might one say operatically--to transform the climate. When he cancelled funding for the Brooklyn Museum, it was not empty hot air of a Washington politician, but strong, decisive, intelligent, and bold. In a word, leadership.
Mayor Giuliani decided to stand up to the Art Mob.
Now the Mayor faces a challenge on how to follow-up as an Art Gangbuster. He will need to stick to his guns in the face of tremendous social pressure, financial and personal pressure from the cream of New York society.
(There may be more frightening consequences. When Anne Radice cancelled two grants as acting chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts in the Bush administration, she received repeated death threats.)
Whether he knows it or not, Rudy Giuliani is taking on the toughest job of his career, confronting an organization even better funded and more well organized than the Gotti organization. For Giuliani is taking on the Art Mafia on its home turf.
All the country, indeed the entire world, looks to New York for leadership in the arts.
The stakes are tremendous, because a victory by Giuliani will inspire fights against the Art Mob across the country, and perhaps around the globe.
If Rudy Giuliani wins, Art will never be the same again. A new era will begin in the new Millenium.
And if anyone in the world has a fighting chance of beating the Art Mob, it is Rudy Giuliani.
